It wasn't a pleasant feeling, South Carolina. And the closer the plane got to landing on the tarmac, the more the unpleasant feeling bubbled up in her stomach.

This was her third flight in this forsaken state, and somewhere along the line she had lost her luggage. She wasn't certain if it was a pre-meditated idea on her part, or if she was just too distracted by the sickness she felt oozing out of the pores within the very ground.

The nausea of it all pulled on her as she shuffled past strangers, eager to be off the plane, as if somehow the open air would dilute the very flu that was her birth state. It didn't.

She gasped in air abruptly, like some dying creature, and could feel the stares of those around her. It was almost a lovely feeling, the stares- perhaps if she was uncouth enough someone (Cobb!) would just notice her in here already and the ugly white cells around her would converge.

She knew they wouldn't though, she had been down that road already- the screaming, the breaking things, and there had been profanity, she remembered. It lead to stares, attention, as much of it as she could get. And then people had converged, but she hadn't woken up outside, she'd woken up in a hospital, with an IV drip in her arm.

The white cells are taking care of you, her sister had told her mockingly, and she'd cringed. For a terrifying moment that stretched, she'd given up on trying to get out, because now she knew- knew- that she was one of them.

Except anymore she felt like a cancer cell that had tricked the body into caring for it. Some days she couldn't decide if this was comforting or not. If she was cancer, was she still just part of it all, then? And just turned and was attacking viscously? (Not so successfully though, she admitted to herself). Or did that make her an outside source, still entirely her.

Still killing Cobb, though. Either way she had to go.

And here lies South Carolina, somewhere to go to. Somewhere to pull her up from herself, to tell her in no uncertain terms that she was none of these things, or she was all of these things.

She hailed a cab and headed home, to her mother.